SCOTT GULLEDGE / Scoll
Missionaries, Sister Barrett (left) and Sister Matelau help students Stephanie Hall and Elisabeth Lobel set goals in their missionary work.

Students face challenges of doing missionary work

Leslie Bardsley BAR04015@BYUI.EDU Scroll Staff

“Every member a missionary.”

This familiar adage, coined by President Spencer W. Kimball, is about to be tested.

In a Mission Presidents Seminar on June 21, 2005, Elder M. Russell Ballard of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles asked that “every member of the church, active and less-active, prayerfully find and arrange for at least one person to be taught by [the] missionaries before December 23.”

Elder Ballard issued his request as a way to help honor the prophet Joseph Smith on the 200th anniversary of his birth.

“We will never accomplish what President Hinckley asked for in expanding the growth of the Church and increasing the level of those we find and teach until we are successful in drawing the members of the Church into the work,” Elder Ballard said.

This request, though exciting in its possibilities, seems like an insurmountable challenge for BYU-Idaho students who live in a predominantly LDS environment.

“It’s just that the LDS population is so overwhelming here and that all the non-LDS people seem happy with what they have,“ said Melissa Brunisholz, a senior from Sandy, Utah.

Sister Matelau and Sister Barrett, missionaries serving in the Rexburg area, advised students that the first thing they needed to do was to pray to be led to someone who is ready.

“It takes more faith and planning to share the gospel with living among Saints,” said Rob Eaton, a religion professor at BYU-I.

Eaton shared two suggestions about how students here in Rexburg can fulfill Elder Ballard’s request.

First, students can review people they have known in the past and prayerfully consider who of their friends or relatives may be waiting for the gospel.

“Odds are great with friends because you can share from the heart,” he said.

Eaton also suggested looking upon travel experiences as missionary opportunities. He said that if students have prayed for a missionary opportunity and properly prepared themselves, those prayers would be answered.

“Missionaries are great teachers,” he said. “And they can be great finders too, but the odds are great when friends find friends.”

“It will be a great day when our people not only pray for the missionaries throughout the world, but ask the Lord to help them to assist the missionaries who are laboring in their own ward,” said President Gordon B. Hinckley at the first Worldwide Leadership Training Meeting in 2003.

If students have local referrals they can contact the local sister missionaries at 356-5943.